ORGANIC FOOD: THE PARADOX - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 59

public meetings and consultations with the public. Monsanto, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the
Biotechnology Industry Organization, and other agribusiness interests used their influence with the admin-
istration to have the use of genetic engineering, food irradiation, and sewage sludge included in the organic
standards. The public outcry could be heard from coast to coast. More than 275,000 Americans sent com-
ments to the USDA—a record number for the agency—almost all saying no to the inclusion of the “big
three” in organics.
Responding to the public pressure, Clinton's secretary of agriculture, Dan Glickman, announced on
December 20, 2000, that the new standards “specifically prohibited the use of genetic engineering methods,
ionizing radiation, and sewage sludge for fertilization.” Even so, many were disappointed, because the
standard did not address a wide range of areas that the organics community felt should have been included
to protect the integrity of organic products.
Dr. Phil Howard, a professor at the University of Michigan who has written extensively on the organics
industry, says the USDA standard was “fairly strict with respect to prohibiting other unacceptable inputs
(such as antibiotics and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides), but also removed references to the higher
ideals of organic found in some regional certification systems.” Howard charges that “the national standard
creates a 'ceiling' by prohibiting organic certifiers from enforcing stricter standards than those required by
the USDA, even those they previously maintained.” 1
Small organic producers around the country argued that the standards were designed to exclude small
farmers and favor industrial farms, because organic certification required too much recordkeeping and pa-
perwork. Farmers must track every time a new crop is planted, which for a large industrial farm is not
difficult. For a community-supported agriculture (CSA) venture that might grow forty different crops and
rotate them in different areas in a season, the recordkeeping is onerous. Certification can also be expensive,
so many small farmers who use organic practices choose not to go through the process. These small pro-
ducers have counted on local customers who can visit the farm and see for themselves how food is being
produced without relying on a USDA organic label.
Adoption of the federal standards changed the organic industry dramatically. The largest food manufac-
turers saw an opening for a profitable niche market without having to adopt the overall ethic of organic
agriculture. An opportunity was lost for creating a new type of food system, because the failure to address
scale issues in the standard has allowed the big food processing companies to gobble up organic brands.
The economic pressure for low-priced organic food has created the same inequities for independent pro-
cessors, small retailers, farmers, and farmworkers that exist in conventional agriculture.
Moreover, government involvement lent the necessary credibility for the big corporations to develop an
interest in organics, while the guidelines allowing industrial production (minus the use of agrochemicals)
made consolidated processing and distribution feasible. In a sad twist of fate, the type of agriculture that
our great-grandparents practiced prior to 1950 is more expensive today than the chemical-intensive agri-
culture used by conventional growers.
The new guidelines allow organic products and ingredients to be sourced from around the world,
wherever they are cheapest, giving large companies like Dean Foods and Hain Celestial an advantage. The
Stonyfield Farm chairman and CEO, Gary Hirshberg, admits that to produce organic dairy at a competitive
price his company has to buy milk powder from New Zealand, nine thousand miles away. “It would be
great to get all of our food within a ten-mile radius of our house,” he says. “But once you're in organic,
you have to source globally.” 2 This cost-cutting practice is not sustainable, and it is contrary to what most
organic consumers expect.
The failure to include livable-wage language in the USDA standard meant that organic agriculture
would mirror the same injustices faced by workers in conventional agriculture. By failing to include many
of the principles that were originally part of the organic philosophy, the organic label had lost its soul.